New Arrivals
The Present is Missing
a-Musik is honoured to present a new album by one of our all-time favourites, Anthony Moore. We've been faszinated by his work, both with Slapp Happy and solo, since quite a long time now, and are happy to release this LP with wonderful live recordings he did with The Missing Present Band in Cologne in late 2015. "In a surround-sound melee of songs, soundscapes and electrickery, time is sonified in an affectionate tribute to Laika, Belka, Strelka and the rest of their canine comrades who …
Take Suicide
A holy grail of the minimal synth and one of the most obscure Italian musical projects, reissued on Mannequin Records. Originally released in 1981 by Broadbean Records, Flo & Andrew's Take Suicide was home-recorded and home-mixed by the duo in Bologna, using early drum machines like the Boss DR-55 and the Korg KR-55, analog synthesizers, guitar, saxophone and tape loops. "To Committ Suicide" travels through contort and nervous synth sounds and loops, taking somehow inspiration from the No …
Zoo
Die Form is a French post-industrial and electronic band formed in 1977-1978. The name 'Die Form' means '(the) form/shape' in German and is a play on the English homonym 'deformed' and on the French homonym 'difforme' (deformed). Die Form is the primary project of electronic musician and multimedia artist Philippe Fichot. He began by recording a number of experimental cassette releases in the late 1970s and formed the Bain Total label to release these early cassettes, as well as various s…
Solo Exhibition
This is a threat! A monumental 8CD box, supremely well-curated (and tirelessly hard-working) "Solo Exhibition" is the definitive solo career retrospective by seminal musician and visual artist Jasun Martz. Spanning the full range of his non-standard, truly unique music practice, always boldly innovative, esoteric and off-centre, it covers themes ranging from essential experimental, synth-oriented electronics thru to immersive, atmospheric epics soundscapes & contemporary classical/orchestral. 20…
Mannerlaatta
Mannerlaatta (Tectonic Plate) is Mika Vainio’s soundtrack for a “74 minute lettrist film made entirely without a camera” by Finnish film maker Mika Taanila; his 3rd following their previous collaborations, A Physical Ring (2002) and Return of the Atom (2015). The music was written very early on in the film’s two and a half year development, and subsequently held a strong sway over the rhythm of the film’s editing and visual narration - which takes place as a series of black and white images made…
Cantilena
Six chamber works by the Paris-based composer Giuliano d'Angiolini, following on from his exquisite album 'Simmetrie di Ritorno' on Edition RZ.
“A port in the storm, this. Giuliano d’Angiolini is a Paris-based Italian composer and ethnomusicologist who makes music of whispered, consolatory indeterminacy. He is probably best known (if he is known at all) for a 2011 album called Simmetrie di Ritorno, but I would argue that this new release is more sublime, or perhaps just more t…
Seaside
In late 2015 John Tilbury bought a clavichord, which is now in the conservatory of his house in the Kentish seaside town of Deal. This is the first CD on which John plays clavichord rather than piano. Fittingly for the hundredth Cd on Another Timbre, the disc combines compositions and improvisations.Christian Wolff and John Tilbury first met and worked together in the late 1960’s. At that time Christian composed a series of piano pieces for John with the general title ‘Tilbury’. For this disc Jo…
Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams
Dust-to-Digital's inaugural release, 2003's Goodbye, Babylon (DTD 001CD), included two recordings by a mysterious gospel musician from Texas named Washington Phillips, who died in 1954. After fielding inquiries about the hauntingly beautiful songs from listeners around the world, in 2013, Dust-to-Digital checked in with Michael Corcoran, the leading researcher on Phillips, to see if any new information had been uncovered. Indeed, Michael had some leads, but he would need a working budget t…
Circle Of Light - Original Electronic Soundtrack
Trunk Records present a highly important and unreleased soundtrack for Circle Of Life, created in 1972 by musician Delia Derbyshire and artist Elsa Stansfield. The soundtrack is a mix of concrete ideas, sound design, tape manipulation, natural environmental sounds and birdsong. The recording was originally commissioned by director, producer and art collector Anthony Roland for his 1972 film about the slides of radical stills photographer, Pamela Bone. The film has been rarely seen and the so…
Musik Hessayistik
Henning Christiansen (Copenhagen, 1932 – Isle of Møn, 2008) was a Danish composer and an active member of the Fluxus movement. He studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen and at the more liberal Ex-School (Eks-Skolen) embracing soon its radical approach in study and creation of art and developing his own musical thinking. In 1962 he attended the George Maciunas’s International Festspiele Neuster Musik in Wiesbaden, where he probably experienced an epiphany that caused a si…
The Stimulated Australia
These are ambiences from Australian landscapes, recorded by Spencer Clark (Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Typhonian Highlife, The Skaters, et al). Forced by undersigned into the genus of the field recordist. Natural sounds are mirrored to a world of fabricated aquarium music. Where lorikeets and ocean waves serve as a counterpoint for beautiful, light background airs. The recorder cunningly observes a building where the tourist forages, and fascinates the sounds of lands that are forever …
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - The First Years
A photographic essay depicting the everyday work of the members of the mythical workshop responsable for most of BBC´s sound effects between the 50s and 80s. All images are believed to be in the public domain and of BBC origin. Edited captions by Ray White.
Zine A5 / Staple / ByW / 40 pp / 1st ed - 2014 / 50 copies
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S. Talks #1
S. Talks # is a series of uncut interviews with electronic contemporary musicians. Each interview is individually published in a zine and distributed for free. Originally from Houston, Texas, James Daniel Emmanuel is a pioneer of electronic minimal music with a career that started in the late 70s and more than fifteen albums released...
Zine 10 x 15 cm / Stapled / B-W / 6 pp / 1st ed - 2013 / 100 copies
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Removal Technician
Alex Hubbard and Dan Mains’ Removal Technician, a compilation of the late-nineties zine of the same name that details their afterschool job at an Oregon funeral home. Removal Technician features Hubbard and Mains’ writings, drawings, and photographs along with appropriated advertisements, illustrations, and instructions from this hidden industry. While the overall effect is raw, the writing is insightful and adds levity to the difficult reality of people reduced to material remains.
Alex Hubbard…
Theta
Theta is the first album from Mai Mai Mai, the tracks have been recorded in Rome and them mixed in L.A. by Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu). Nasty beats and sharp sounds emerges from a cloudy background of noises and field recordings, over which Mai Mai Mai applies some recorded ancient greek chants or slowly recites his sermons.
Canicola
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the label, this rare early tape by Heroin In Tahiti is available again in a limited LP edition. Raw experiment in "neorealist psychedelia” by spaghetti-wasters Heroin In Tahiti from Rome, "Canicola" is dedicated to the sun, the obsessive superstitions and the golden yellow grain of Italy as portrayed by anthropologist Ernesto De Martino in legendary essays such as “South and Magic” and “The Land of Remorse”. Side A is a long, hallucinatory track which …
Random Soundtrack
"Random Soundtrack" is a kind of extended field recording or sonic Écriture automatique. It's another attempt to search the point where music and found sounds intersect. "Random Soundtrack" is a sort of sister album to last year's "Vanishing Land". Similarly to its predecessor, it is a series of interfusing recordings, compositions, scraps of field recordings, ordinary connectors. However, while "Vanishing Land" was the result of laborious shuffling a well-known material, "Random Soundtrack" is …
Mining The Seam - The Rest Of The Spotlite Sessions
Alto Saxophone – Trevor Watts
Bass – Barry Guy
Drums – John Stevens
Recorded at Riverside Studios, London, May 1977. Previously unissued.
Application Interaction And...
The trio of drummer John Stevens, bassist Barry Guy and saxophonist Trevor Watts was one of Stevens ’ s hottest small groups and the two records they cut for Spotlite in the late 70s are Atlantic straddling classics that reconcile the emotive supernatural force of the late Albert Ayler with the exacting microdetail of the post SME set. Application Interaction And… was the second of these discs, the first, No Fear, having already been made available on CD by Hi 4 Head. At points the fidelity is p…
No Fear
Recorded in May of 1977 and released a year later on Spotlite, No Fear is one of drummer John Stevens' excellent jazzier sessions. Backed by his regular acolytes Trevor Watts and Barry Guy, the leader of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble revels in the hot free jazz licks he and the saxophonist came up with. His playing is superbly detailed by the recording, the interplay between his hi-hat cymbals and snare drum being particularly impressive in this jazz context. Watts pours a lot of soul into his …